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Convention center set for major role

The China National Convention Center in Beijing was experiencing a few days of calm in early November before becoming the hive of activity during the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders' Week.

Starting on Nov 5, six of the seven days of meetings will be held at the former Beijing Olympics facility, including the Concluding Senior Officials Meeting, the Ministerial Meeting, the APEC CEO Summit and the APEC Business Advisory Council Dialogue with Leaders.

The center, which has hosted numerous exhibitions, conventions and commercial activities, will also provide catering services to more than 73,000 people during the week.

The center has been preparing for the APEC events since October 2013. Its working groups have visited the Indonesian island of Bali as well as Chinese cities Shanghai, Ningbo and Qingdao to meet various event organizing committees and local convention center operators.

Liu Haiying, CEO of the China National Convention Center, said the CNCC has improved its facilities based on the demands of the APEC Economic Leaders' Week and will use its experience of catering to high-level events and the lessons they learned from the working group visits.

Beijing fast-tracks 30 electric buses for APEC

The Beijing government bought 700 electric buses from Beiqi Foton Motor on Nov 2 and immediately dispatched 30 of them to Huairou district, where the APEC meetings will be held.

Government officials say the move will help reduce emissions and shows the Beijing government's dedication to improving the city's air quality.

Among the 30 buses, 10 were fitted with new technologies that will enable batteries to be charged in 12 minutes to cover a distance of up to 100 kilometers.

The city will dispatch 70 additional electric buses to the Huairou district in the near future as part of a pilot project.

The purchase marks Foton's biggest electric bus order in company history. Established in 1996, Foton is the biggest commercial vehicle manufacturer in China by sales volume. By last year, it had delivered 7 million vehicles globally, including 30,000 new energy vehicles in China.

Over the next three years, state-owned Beijing Public Transport Holdings plans to phase out 8,000 aging buses and replace them with environmentally friendly ones. The proportion of new energy buses to total buses is expected to reach 70 percent.

By 2017, emissions from buses will be reduced by 50 to 60 percent, the city government said.

Chinese-led group to build Mexico's rail

A Chinese-led consortium has won a bid to build Mexico's first high-speed rail line in the first overseas use of Chinese bullet trains.

Mexico's Ministry of Communications and Transport announced on Nov 3 that the group, headed by China Railway Construction Corp and including a handful of Mexican construction firms, had been granted the contract to bring the first high-speed rail line to Latin America.

The 50.8 billion peso ($3.7 billion; 3.0 billion euros) project involves building a 210-kilometer high-speed line to connect the capital, Mexico City, with the growing industrial hub of Queretaro to the north by 2017. On completion, the bullet train will cut travel time from about two and a half hours to less than an hour, with trains traveling at a maximum of 300 km/h.

China Railway Construction Corp will be responsible for the line's design, construction, equipment installation and maintenance.

US food watchdog tosend more inspectors

The top US food safety authority will dispatch more inspectors to China to help ensure the quality of exports, making its China office the largest one overseas, says a senior US official.

As early as next year, staff at the China office will be boosted to 21 from the current four, and nine of them will be responsible for food safety, said Christopher Hickey, director of the Food and Drug Administration's China offices. There are now only two in food safety, and the rest are in charge of drugs and medical devices.

China is the fourth-largest exporter of food to the US.

Citing a globalized food and drug supply chain, China is also considering sending safety inspectors to the US, said Wu Yongning, chief scientist from the China National Center For Food Safety Risk Assessment.

Wu said that given China's sheer size, the jump in the number of US FDA inspectors would allow more on-site inspections of high-risk producers.

"That helps with China's domestic food safety as well in terms of supervision over the industry," he said.

More sectors to be open to foreign investors

China has proposed cutting by more than half the number of sectors restricted or off limits to foreign investors.

After one month for soliciting opinions, the new guidelines will be submitted to the State Council and are expected to come into force by the end of the year, said Wang Dong, deputy director general of the department of foreign capital and overseas investment, part of the National Development and Reform Commission.

The new draft decreases the number of restricted sectors from 79 to 35.

Sectors with reduced restrictions include steel, ethylene, refining, papermaking, coal chemical equipment, automotive electronics, lifting appliances, electric transmission and transformation equipment, railway lines, subways, international ocean shipping, e-commerce, finance and chain stores, commission officials say.

"The new version of the catalogue will further facilitate foreign investment, and it shows our strong commitment to opening up and optimizing the investment environment for foreign investors," Wang said.

The number of sectors now limited to joint ventures and partnerships has been cut from 43 to 11, while those requiring majority Chinese investment have been cut from 44 to 22.

Sports field in anti-graft spotlight

With the shadow of match-fixing scandals lingering over Chinese soccer, an anti-graft campaign is targeting the country's top sports body.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, the country's top anti-graft agency, criticized the soccer's governing body for malpractice for a series of official corruption and game-manipulating scandals. The scandals have tarnished the game's improvement and international image, the commission said.

"Chinese soccer is struggling after 20 years of professional reform," it said.

The criticism was issued on the final day of play for the 2014 Chinese Super League, the country's football soccer league, which was founded in 1994.

(China Daily European Weekly 11/07/2014 page2)